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Dulles shrugged. “I don’t want Hoover to know that. Now. Or ever. I want the FBI looking in every nook and cranny for Colonel Frogger.”

“If I didn’t know better, that might sound like an order,” Donovan said, his voice tense.

“If you’re not willing to go along with that, I’ll go see the President, right now, and make my case,” Dulles said. “This has to be kept secret, Bill.”

“Second the motion,” Graham said.

After a very perceptible pause, Donovan said, “Okay. I’ll go along. I’m not sure if I’m doing so because I think you’re right, or because there is a certain appeal to the thought of J. Edgar being increasingly humbled by not being able to find an escaped POW, or because I really don’t want the President to have proof that the both of you are half in the bag before five o’clock in the afternoon.”

Neither Graham nor Dulles replied.

“This is where I usually say ‘keep me posted,’” Donovan said. “But that would be a waste of breath with you two, wouldn’t it?”

He pushed himself out of his chair and walked out of the office.

II

[ONE]

4730 Avenida Libertador

Buenos Aires, Argentina

1525 12 August 1943

When Cletus Frade came down the stairs into the basement garage of the mansion, he looked—and felt—both very tired and upset. He also felt grimy. He was wearing the same clothing—except for underwear that he had changed twice—he had put on forty-odd hours before in Los Angeles: a polo shirt and khaki trousers, and battered Western boots. Once he had arrived in Argentina, where it was winter, he had added a fur-collared leather jacket, the breast of which had sewn to it a leather patch bearing a stamped-in-gold representation of Naval Aviator’s wings and the legend C. H. FRADE 1LT USMCR.

Except for maybe six hours spent on the ground taking on fuel, buying food (usually sandwiches), visiting some really incredibly foul gentlemen’s rest facilities, and changing his linen, he had been either at the controls of a Lockheed Lodestar or catching what sleep he could lying in the aisle between the seats in the passenger compartment.

Finally, the Lodestar had touched down, twice, in Argentina.

The first time had been at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, where he had dropped off Mr. Wilhelm Fischer, a South African, and where Frade’s wife had told him the bad news:

That she had gone to Casa Chica the previous afternoon with provisions for Sergeant Stein and the others and found only a nearly destroyed Casa Chica, large pools of blood on the airstrip, and nothing and nobody else. Stein was gone, and so were Suboficial Mayor Rodríguez, the Froggers, The Other Dorotea, and the dozen ex-Húsares de Pueyrredón peones who were supposed to be guarding the place.

There hadn’t been time then to do anything about that. The SAA Lodestar was due at Aerodromo Jorge Frade in Morón in an hour—he had sent a telegram from Brazil announcing their Estimated Time of Arrival—and if it didn’t land more or less on time, el Coronel Martín, who Frade was sure would be there to meet him, would suspect that the Lodestar had landed somewhere else. For example, at Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.

And taking into account what Dorotea had told him had happened at Casa Chica, it was also quite possible that Martín would be waiting at Jorge Frade with a warrant for his arrest as at least a conspirator in the kidnapping, or whatever it might be called, of the Froggers.

Clete Frade did the best with what he had. And what he had was his own Lodestar and someone who could fly it—SAA’s chief pilot, Gonzalo Delgano. Delgano would not be suspected by Martín of having anything to do with the Froggers because Delgano was actually a BIS major charged by Martín with keeping an eye on Frade.

Frade had somewhat turned Delg

ano. The day before, during a fuel stop at La Paz, Bolivia, he had appealed to Delgano. And Delgano had, if not changed sides, then—after praying for guidance and being swayed by his concept of a Christian Officer’s Code of Behavior—decided that he was morally obliged to help Frade smuggle Herr Fischer/Oberstleutnant Frogger into Argentina aboard the Lodestar.

If the whole thing had blown up—and it looked as if it had—and everything came out—as it inevitably would—Delgano was in deep trouble. But neither Frade nor Delgano thought el Coronel Martín would be waiting at Jorge Frade with handcuffs for both of them. With a little bit of luck, Delgano could just go home from the airfield.

Or get in a car and drive to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo and fly the Frade Lodestar, with Oberstleutnant Frogger and the others of Frade’s OSS team, across the River Plate to sanctuary in Uruguay.

Frade had ordered that everything the OSS owned on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo be prepared for demolition and for all the OSS personnel to be prepared to get on the Lodestar at a moment’s notice.

Then he and Delgano had flown the SAA Lodestar to Aerodromo Coronel Jorge Frade in Morón, where neither was surprised to find el Coronel Martín waiting for them.

Not with handcuffs, but with the announcement that el Coronel Perón had some new information regarding the missing Froggers that he wished to discuss with Frade, and he thought that it would be a good idea for Frade to hear what he had to say.

“Not in the next couple of days, Don Cletus. Right now,” Martín had said. “I’m afraid I must insist. You can follow me to the house on Libertador and then go home.”

“How am I going to follow you?”